After many victories at home, William and Catherine Booth began to look abroad. They realised that "the field is the world," and they longed to commence operations on the Continent. In the summer of 1881, with high hopes and some natural fears, they dedicated their eldest daughter to France. In giving her they gave their best. Delicate girl though she was, she had become one of the greatest spiritual forces in England. She swayed vast multitudes by something higher than mere eloquence. Wherever she went revivals broke out and hundreds were converted. There was a pathos and a power in her appeals which made them irresistible. At the time of her departure she received many letters from friends whom she had spiritually helped, and who realised how much they would miss her in England. Nowhere had she done more good, nowhere could her absence create a greater blank, than in her own home. Her sister Eva wrote: "I cannot bear the thought that you are gone. You have always understood me. I hope one day to be of some use to you, in return for all you have done for me." And her brother Herbert wrote her: "You cannot know how much I felt your leaving. The blow came so suddenly. You were gone. Only God and myself know how much I had lost in you. I can truthfully say that you have been _everything_ to me, and if it had not been for you I should never have been where and what I am spiritually at present. God bless you a thousand thousand times. Oh! how I long to be of some little service to you after all you have been to me.... Thousands upon thousands of true, loving hearts are bearing you up at the Eternal throne, mine among them. You have a chance that men of the past would have given their blood for, and that the very angels in Heaven covet."